Get Involved: Plan for the October 5 Day of Mass Resistance

While yesterday jclifford and I wrote on the problem of inaction, today I’ve been writing on the theme of action, with specific ways to get active. The only way for America to see a resurgence of liberal activism is for more liberals to act, but we shouldn’t each have to reinvent the wheel. There are already some solid, tried and true ways that people of conscience can act to build the momentum of our times in the direction of peace, liberty, and open government.

One way for to take action is to contact local media, an option I talk about here.
Another avenue for action involves finding local protest events organized by others, an option I talk about here.

But every once in a while, a nationally-organized event comes to pass that’s worth participating in. I think one of those is coming our way. It’s called the Day of Mass Resistance, it’s on October 5 of this year, and the group that’s organizing it (World Can’t Wait) seems to be organizing it in a very smart way. They’re getting the word out months in advance, they’ve decided to shelve some of the more fanciful and foreign-policy agenda items of the communist groups that have participated in its coalition in the past, they’re instead focusing on the domestic backtrack of Bush years, and their actions, while national in scope, are to be held in localities around the nation, making the act of protest more ethical and more feasible for millions of people.

Here is the official Call to Action for World Can’t Wait’s October 5 Day of Mass Resistance (which you are encouraged to download here as a pdf and distribute widely and wildly). I’ve read it through, and if I had the chance to revise it myself I wouldn’t change a single word.

October 5, 2006: Day of Mass Resistance
The Call to Drive out the Bush Regime

YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn’t fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler – and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.

There is not going to be some magical “pendulum swing.” People who steal elections and believe they’re on a “mission from God” will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into “leaders” who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.

And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush’s outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime’s program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.

The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

On a practical level, the Day of Mass Resistance is envisioned to take place as a general strike:

Taking off work, taking off school, shutting down campuses and coming together in mass gatherings, we must let the country and the world know that:

—millions of us reject this illegitimate regime that is as criminal as it is dangerous to humanity & the existence of this planet.

—we refuse to grow accustomed to a political climate that is becoming everyday more frightening & reactionary.

We are what we’ve been waiting for.

“We are what we’ve been waiting for.” What a wonderful, invigorating statement of responsibility and commitment.

Until I see this turned into a “Millions for Mumia / US Out Of the Philippines” marathon, I’m on board. As specific plans flesh out for places big and small, I’ll be sure to pass them on.

How about you? Are you on board? Are you part of the we that we’ve been waiting for?